I still think, but am not positive, that I recieve much more in steem rewards at the lower price of steem than when steem was at a dollar. Then a part of the reward was SBD's, and had to be sold and converted into steem to power it up. As a general user I do not feel I need to understand the "underlying protocols" of steem to use the block chain.
Price/value of steem really only effects one group of people and that is the short term investor that does nothing with the steem they buy other than hold it. If in Jan. of last year someone had invested and bought 10,000 Steem powered it up, and just voted at full power on 20 comments a day from others or on 20 post a day from others, how much steem would they have? They would have a lot more than that initial 10,000 SP investment.
You don't need to understand unless you want to understand them really. For me, I find some of it interesting and a lot of it over my head. You are probably earning more Steem now, especially with more active support out there.
They would probably have about 20% more :)
!ENGAGE 25
@bashadow you have received
25 ENGAGEfrom @contrabourdon!View and trade the tokens on Steem Engine.